Mannequins are used for a variety of purposes including the exhibition of clothes and/or the tailoring thereof. Particularly in the case of modeling clothes which may be contained in museums, it is desirable, for cost reasons, to create a single and flexible facility by which the clothes may be exhibited. Because clothes contained in museums may span a range of several centuries, with their attendant diversity, not only of the human anatomy as it has evolved, but also to take into account styling variations, it is particularly desirable to create as comprehensive a single system as can be managed and yet still allow the flexibility and adjustability to display such aged clothing of various sorts, sizes, and styles, accurately and without damaging the thus exhibited fragile clothes. Most prior art mannequins of which Applicant is aware have focused primarily on the use of such devices for tailoring clothes, as they are being made for a customer, or to exhibit models of clothes in which the clothes can always be adjusted to the shape of the mannequin. Such an approach is obviously not feasible with clothes that have already been made, which may be located in a museum, and which are often too fragile to be extensively manipulated.
For a more detailed understanding of how the human anatomy, its basic structure, associated clothing and posture styles have changed over the last several hundred years, reference may be had to a number of publications, including the Autumn 1981 issue of "Colonial Williamsburg Today", Volume IV, Number 1. As this article and a number of other publications make clear, not only has human anatomy evolved, particularly in the United States, due principally to dietary factors, but clothing and posture styles have changed as well so as to make the authentic and non-destructive display of these many varied forms of clothes with a single mannequin an extremely difficult proposition.
Accordingly, it is a primary object of this invention to provide a comprehensive mannequin system, comprising several portions, to model various parts of the human anatomy, and having certain features adjustable to more closely approximate both the shape of the varied forms of the human anatomy as well as various clothing styles that may be representative of a museum collection.
Typical prior art efforts in the field are represented by U.S. Pat. No. 377,338 which features a dummy having an adjustable waist length, U.S. Pat. No. 272,479 which discloses a dress form having a complicate series of linkages to adapt the form to the varying shape of a dress, and U.S. Pat. No. 3,472,335 which discloses an adjustable mannequin, adjustable however only in terms of posture and modular only in the sense that various portions of the human anatomy, such as a head, may be detachably mounted to such a mannequin. Insofar as Applicant is aware, neither these references, nor any of the prior art teaches mannequins which are adjustable to conform the mannequin to a given human anatomy in such important areas as the shoulder area, the upper torso area, and the lower torso area.
Accordingly, it is another prime object of this invention to provide a mannequin system which features adjustability of the mannequin in a variety of areas including those portions of a human anatomy corresponding, for example, to the shoulders, the upper torso, and the lower torso.